Crude Oil Prices: Russia Expects Long Recovery for Global Demand - Bloomberg

Crude Oil Prices: Russia Expects Long Recovery for Global Demand - Bloomberg:

Russia expects a long and gradual revival of the oil market after the pandemic this year crushed energy demand across the world.

“The recovery won’t be fast, it will take quite a while before the pre-crisis levels can be reached,” Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Sunday. In 2020, on the back of coronavirus lockdowns, global oil demand is set to decline by as much as 10% compared to last year, he said in his address to a two-day online meeting of G-20 energy ministers.

The recent rebound in the oil market has stalled as fuel consumption remains weak in the U.S., while several European governments have reintroduced measures to keep a lid on the coronavirus. At the same time, the market is struggling to absorb returning supply. Oil traders have reported a sharp increase in Iraqi exports for next month, while output from Libya has shown signs of rising as its civil war abates.

Neil Atkinson, the International Energy Agency’s head of oil industry and markets, said at a Bloomberg event last week that the agency is more likely to downgrade its demand forecasts than lift them in its next report. The IEA has already slashed its forecast for 2020 by 400,000 barrels a day in the past two months to 91.7 million barrels per day.